


A Silken Touch

by kaeorin



Series: Stark Tower: Avengers Drabbles [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hair Braiding, Hair Brushing, Reader Insert, Stark Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 03:32:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18146396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: When Wanda discovers that no one’s ever played with Loki’s hair before, she enlists your help in making that right. And then of course he has to find a way to repay you.





	A Silken Touch

It was an unconscious thing, really. Wanda’s hair was lovely: thick and glossy and that beautiful, reddish-chestnut color. As the two of you had grown closer and your boundaries had slipped a bit, you had started reaching out to play with her hair during movie nights. Maybe it was a holdover from your short, forgotten childhood: perhaps you’d often brushed and braided someone else’s hair. You didn’t like spending much time thinking about any of that, though, and so you rarely allowed yourself to question it. There was something peaceful about letting your fingers glide through the soft warmth of her hair. Working through the snags with your fingertips gave you a sense of accomplishment that didn’t come from slicing open an enemy combatant. Sometimes you worked her hair into tiny braids, but mostly that was only so you could then run your fingers along the finished strands and admire the feeling of each perfectly-formed little rope before smoothing it out again. 

Over time, the habit stretched beyond movie nights. After any particularly-bad mission, or even just a particularly-bad day, she would sit at your feet next to the couch, or next to your bed, and tilt her head back into your lap. Sometimes she asked aloud—a simple “Please?”—and sometimes she just asked with her eyes.

You wondered, but had never quite worked up the courage to ask, whether her mother had ever done this for her. You knew a little about Wanda’s childhood—as much as anyone else on the team, anyway—and though your questions burned in your mind, you didn’t ask. She knew you were curious. It wouldn’t take powers like hers to know that you were curious. But you never pushed, and maybe that was why she let you get as close as she did. 

One night, the two of you wound up sitting alone in the living room. Most of the others were out on missions of their own, and Tony had locked himself in the lab with Vision, so the Tower was more or less peaceful. Tonight, Wanda had not ended up on the floor, but on the couch with you, sitting with her back to you. It hadn’t taken much convincing at all to get you to angle your body towards hers and reach out to work your fingers through her hair. 

The two of you spoke quietly from time to time, mostly as thoughts or comments arose, but mostly there was something meditative about your movements. You had always taken some amount of satisfaction out of watching the way your fingers parted long hair, trailing empty spaces behind them like wakes through water. But then, just as effortlessly, the trails always closed up again, like you’d never been there. 

After a while, she reached back to touch your knee. The sudden touch jarred you out of your thoughts, but...gently. She pulled her hand away and then spoke: “It is rude to lurk in doorways.”

“Apologies.” It wasn’t hard to recognize the voice—that low, rich timbre, flavored with just the slightest hint of mischief. “I didn’t want to intrude.”

Tonight, there was something different in his voice, and it was hard to give it a name. Thor had been gone for nearly three weeks now, and in the course of that time, Loki had become even more withdrawn than usual. It was hard to blame him. The others in the tower were still wary. No one was outright hostile to the man who had once been their enemy, but many of them made little to no effort to hide their discomfort around him. At least when Thor was around, his ebullient nature and adoration of his darker, shiftier brother seemed to make it easier for the others to tolerate Loki. Your teammates’ behavior made you nervous. How much longer could he possibly be willing to withstand this treatment before he decided to leave? 

Loki stepped closer to the couch, and you turned to look at him. “You’re not intruding,” you said simply. Sometimes you wanted to be more reassuring, perhaps even to lie and promise him that he was part of the team, but you knew perfectly well what something like that would do to this cautious openness he had around you. Still, if he had ventured out to seek someone else’s company, that was a good sign, right? He offered you a tight smile and gestured towards the two of you.

“What are you doing?” 

Lord, this man. Your stomach twisted in sympathy for him. He was insanely smart—all three of you knew that he could tell what was happening—but he was trying to make conversation. Wanda sat forward a bit, and turned to face Loki. “Has anyone ever played with your hair? It is wonderful. Whatever else is happening, it always makes me more relaxed.” She turned to look at you with bright eyes, and you couldn’t help but smile. You wanted to throw your arms around both of these beautiful beings. Of course Wanda could empathize with Loki. She, too, had once been an enemy of the Avengers. But the team had accepted her more readily. “Will you play with his hair? Everyone should know what it feels like.”

“I’d be happy to.” You tried to offer Loki a welcoming smile, but shyness suddenly took hold, and you found that you couldn’t quite make eye contact. “Have a seat, Your Highness.”

“That’s quite alright,” he said quickly, though you noted that he did not retreat to a safer distance. “I wouldn’t want...” But he trailed off. Maybe he was feeling just as shy? The thought gave you the courage to look up at him. He wasn’t looking at you. It was hard to tell in the less-than-optimal lighting in the room, but his cheeks might have been just ever-so-slightly tinted pink?

“You’re both fools,” Wanda groaned, voice loaded down with all the weight of someone who knew more about the insides of your heads than they should. She slid off of the couch and nudged Loki closer. “Just sit. It feels nice. If it doesn’t feel nice for you, you can get up again.”

Surprisingly, that worked. Loki did sit down, though he perched a little closer to the edge than Wanda had, and he kept his back ramrod straight. The height difference made it a little harder for you to reach his hair; after a short while, you let your hands light gently on his shoulders.

“Uh—sorry, I know you’re used to being very regal and elegant, but could you maybe...uh...slouch a little, or maybe just tilt your head backwards?” A sudden fit of nerves gripped you, then, and made you want to yank your hands away from him, but you forced yourself to stay still, lest he get the wrong idea. He hadn’t been nearly this twitchy the time he’d healed your sunburn for you.

He made a sound that was almost like a laugh, and then he let his back curve just slightly. It brought him down closer to your own height, which in turn made it easier to reach him. You lifted your hand off of his shoulders and hesitated only briefly. “Okay, I’m going to...start now. Let me know if I’m hurting you, okay? If I pull too hard or something?” 

Some small, anxious part of you half-expected a breezy dismissal: something like ‘A mere mortal like you could never hurt me’ but Loki didn’t speak. So you drew in a breath and looked over at Wanda (who had settled herself into an armchair across the room and was pretending not to watch) before finally working your fingers through his hair. 

It was so much softer than you could ever have expected. There was not much about tense, guarded Loki that struck you as “soft”, but his hair was like silk. You alternated between stroking his scalp and carefully working out the tiny tangles that threatened to snag your fingers—it was important to get rid of those, but if this was truly the first time anyone had played with his hair, you didn’t want his first impression to be of nothing but that annoying, persistent tugging.

It didn’t actually take very long before you could comb your fingers all the way through his hair, from scalp to tip. Just as Wanda’s had, his hair parted easily between your fingers, and came back together just the same. His hair was inky, glossy, lovely in a way that invited you to wrap a short length of it around your finger and bring it closer to your eyes so you could inspect it. Was it your imagination, or was there a faint iridescent sheen to his hair, like the feathers of a raven? When you unwound it, it held the curl for a moment, until you ran your fingers through it again to smooth it out. 

It was hard to tell exactly what Loki was thinking, but...that wasn’t a new experience. He wasn’t saying much of anything, and his muscles were no more tense than they’d been when he’d first sat down, so...maybe that was promising? It felt strange, how intensely you wanted him to like this. The pressure of being the first one to stroke his hair was intimidating. 

Still, you did your best to push your nerves to the side. When you worked some of his hair into a thin braid that you could caress with the pads of your fingers, you felt him shift a little, shake his head almost imperceptibly. “We only wear braids for victories,” he said. Though something about his words was grim, his voice was peaceful. It sounded like it was coming from far away, like maybe he’d been drifting on this side of a gentle doze. Something about the sound of it put much of your anxiousness to rest. His voice told you that he was enjoying it, which flooded you with a gentle warmth even as you quickly undid the braid.

“Sorry,” you murmured, and went back to massaging his scalp. After a while, though, your courage returned. “I’d say you’ve had a pretty significant victory, you know.” Just like with Wanda, you knew only a little about his story from before the tower. Under the spell of another, much larger threat, held captive, tortured. Forced to do his bidding. You didn’t want to infantilize Loki, or absolve him of all responsibility, but he wasn’t entirely to blame for every single thing he’d done. More words—an explanation, a clarification—waited on the tip of your tongue, but you bit them back. You didn’t want to say too much and run him off.

He sat there for several more minutes, as you fell into the same familiar pattern that you’d always found with Wanda. Touching Loki was just a little more...intimidating, though you couldn’t quite figure out why. Before too long, he cleared his throat and sat forward, then eased off of the couch. “I...should go. Thank you, for that. I...can see the appeal.”

He didn’t really look at you as he took his leave, all but fleeing from the room. You felt your eyebrows furrow as you replayed the interaction in your mind. It was awkward, sure, but that was just because of who you were as a person, wasn’t it? 

Across the room, Wanda caught your eyes and smiled. There was something annoyingly self-satisfied in that smile.

***

Life went on as usual, and for you, “usual” meant missions that were just this side of disastrous. They were rarely anything you couldn’t handle on your own, or at least without help from whoever was accompanying you, but that sinking feeling you got when you felt things slipping sideways...it was hard to shake.

Tonight was especially bad. You and Clint both sported some brand new bullet graze wounds, and rode the jet home in anxious silence. Once you touched down, your first stop had been the gym, so you could try to run or punch your anxiety out of your body, but there was a cluster of new recruits training there tonight, and just the sight of them got your hackles up. There were too many of them, and each one was too bright, too shiny, too happy. Contrasted against the nightmare you’d just clawed your way out of, they seemed somehow grotesque.

Plan abandoned, you stalked back through the hallways to the elevator. You could ride this out in the privacy of your own room, then. It wasn’t ideal, but it was possible. In a way, maybe it was even healthier than using the gym? Beating a punching bag or running on a treadmill until your whole body felt ready to crumble did give you a way to get out of your own mind, but wasn’t that just escaping things, rather than actually dealing with them? If you had nothing to do __but__ lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, you were kind of forced to think about what you’d done, what you’d seen. 

Just when you thought you were going to get to head back to your room without incident, Steve and Wanda rounded the corner in front of you. A hesitant grin curled the corners of her mouth when she saw you, and you ducked your head as though in greeting. Most of the others on the team, they understood when people needed space, but they still pushed a little too hard for Team Bonding Exercises. Wanda and Steve were both very much about the whole We Are Like a Family thing, and though they’d both back off if you insisted that you needed to be left alone, it killed you to say no to either of them. 

“Glad you’re back. If you’re up for it, we’re having a movie night in ten,” Steve said in a low voice. 

“You should come,” Wanda chimed in. She wasn’t quite as subdued, though you knew she had no trouble deciphering the things you were feeling. “You can take your mind off things. Decompress.”

Your mind quickly shifted into gear, trying to come up with any number of excuses that could get you out of having to join other people and sit quietly through a movie—you needed a shower, you needed to change your bandages, you needed to sleep, you needed to clean your room, do laundry, dust, something—but your stupid mouth curled into a tight smile and assured her that you’d be right down, right after you changed into something more comfortable.

As they moved past you, you could have groaned out loud. Simply not showing up was always an option. No one would hold it against you. Hell, maybe you could even stretch out on top of your blankets in bed and accidentally fall asleep. But you hated consciously lying to them. So instead, you trudged up to your room and actually did change your clothes. For a moment, you considered taking a shower to really delay the inevitable, but just the idea of that was draining. Instead, you pulled a brush through your hair a couple of times and let it tumble down around your face. 

When you got back downstairs, the room was already dark, but the movie was only barely getting started. You settled into the sofa. When it came to social situations that you regretted letting yourself get roped into, this was probably one of the least-bad types. People didn’t talk during a movie. They didn’t make eye contact. They didn’t ask how your day was, or how your mission was, or if you needed to talk it out. Really, watching a movie with other people was a lot like what you’d planned to do in isolation: sitting around in silence, staring more or less blankly at the same spot. Not such a big deal.

You flinched a little too hard when something brushed your knee, but then you recognized Wanda’s touch. When you fixed her with a glare, she offered an apologetic smile, but then gestured with her chin. There was someone standing behind you. At some point in the evening, Loki had come up behind you. At first, his eyes were fixed on the screen, but when he saw you looking, he offered a tight smile and stepped closer so he could lean on the back of the couch. Dimly, you made a mental note to talk to Wanda, when you were feeling better, about how she could tell when Loki was lurking. It seemed like a good skill to have, at least tactically-speaking.

A few minutes went by in continue silence, before you heard Loki draw in a breath behind you, and then felt, more than heard, his words in your ear: “You’re tense. May I try something?”

Really, you wanted to press him for more information, but it was rude to talk during movies. Anyway, that might have felt weird, or come across as though you didn’t trust him. Rather than speaking, you took a moment to size him up. His face was...neutral: neither overly-earnest nor dangerously sly. If he was building up to some kind of trick, it was most likely good-natured: he was smarter than to pull something mean-spirited while in the same room as the rest of the Avengers. With perhaps just a little too much hesitance, you nodded. 

Something in his face softened, then, which made you realize just how tense he’d looked only moments before. But he only turned his attention back to the screen, which...okay, fine? Maybe he’d changed his mind. You pushed aside your own uneasiness (maybe you really _were_ tense) and let your eyes drift back to the screen as well. 

After a few minutes, though, you felt him touch your hair. Your instinct was still to flinch. It wasn’t quite as sharp as when Wanda had touched you earlier, but you knew it was noticeable nonetheless. Thankfully, Loki wasn’t deterred. He only paused for a moment before continuing whatever it was he was doing. His deft fingers stroked through your hair. It took several moments too long for your overworked brain to figure out what he was doing—he was playing with your hair, just as you’d played with his.

At first, you were uncomfortable. It had been a few days since your last shower; your hair was greasy, dirty. But at the same time, you didn’t quite want to make him stop? No one had ever done this before. Why would they? You were normally the one doing this for others. It had never occurred to you to ask anyone else to do it for you. But did he really want to be doing it? From what you knew about him, it would take no more than a whisper of a word, or maybe even a careful shift of your position, and he would stop touching you. And maybe that was for the best. Earlier humans had thought of him as a god—he didn’t need to be touching your dirty hair. 

But some small, selfish part of your personality seemed to unfurl, stretch out like a cat. After all, earlier humans _had_ thought of him as a god. If your hair really bothered him, he didn’t have to keep touching it. And yet he did keep touching it. The soft tug and slide of his fingers through your hair quieted the storm that threatened to break in your mind. He was still sort of leaning on the back of the couch, so that his face was just outside of your line of vision. If you tilted your head back and then turned it slightly, you would have been looking right at him. Warmth, then goosebumps spread through your body as he worked, and the sensations allowed you to relax muscles that you hadn’t realized had once been held taut. 

The little bit of attention you’d actually been paying to the movie soon drifted entirely to the feeling of Loki’s fingers in your hair. He’d fallen into enough of a rhythm to give you something solid and predictable to focus on, but he wasn’t repetitive enough for your body to grow accustomed to the feeling. Those goosebumps, those soft chills that rippled through your body, they didn’t stop coming. Something about this felt familiar, somehow, like maybe someone had done this for you when you were very small, but you couldn’t put your finger on any specific memories. Anyway, you closed your eyes and forced yourself to focus on the present. The next time you exhaled, it felt like it came from somewhere deeper than your lungs. How long had you been holding that breath? Had you been this tense for that long?

“Is this alright?” Loki’s voice was warm against your ear, unexpected, though it did not make you flinch. This time, his words did hold that same slyness you’d searched his face for earlier. You could hear the way his lips were curled into a smile. A strange new thrill rushed through you: he was enjoying this. You nodded, wordlessly and not quite hard enough to disrupt what he was doing. He was close enough to your ear that you could hear him draw in a breath, release it slowly. “You’re sure? I can stop, if you’re uncomfortable...”

You almost laughed out loud. You did take a moment to be grateful that you hadn’t—you didn’t want to draw anyone’s attention to this moment. It felt too soft, too personal, to share it with anyone else. You tilted your head backward and turned it so you could give him a level look, though. When Loki met your glare, his grin widened a bit. Even in the dark, you could see the way his eyes sparkled: partly with mischief, but mostly because of the way he was smiling. He had a really nice smile, when he wasn’t leering or smirking or avoiding eye contact altogether.

Maybe you could blame it on your exhaustion and the way you felt more relaxed in that moment than perhaps you’d ever felt in your life, but you didn’t realize just how long you’d been studying his face until his tongue slipped out to wet his lips and you noticed his eyes drop to your mouth. Heat suffused your cheeks, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look away. _Oh._

Somepart of you felt the urge to squirm, to fidget uncomfortably, but you felt like you were frozen into place. Had you ever spent this much time this close to him before? How much time had actually passed? Were you thinking about kissing him? Could you possibly be thinking about the way his lips would feel against yours, the electric thrill that would undoubtedly run through your body at the contact?

When he finally lifted his gaze back to your eyes, you were gratified to see that he did look a little hazy. You weren’t alone in that, at least. He offered a brief, sheepish smile, before turning his attention back to the television screen. “Another time,” he murmured, as though to himself. Your heart thudded in your chest. Had he read your mind?

He twirled a strand of your hair around his finger, and then carefully drew his finger down, to let your hair immediately begin to unwind itself. A new rush of pleasure flooded through you, slowing your heartbeat, quieting your thoughts. Before you could stop yourself, a quiet sound passed your lips—something between a whimper and a sigh. In the darkness, your eyes went wide, but none of your teammates even seemed to notice. 

Except Loki. He moved even closer to your ear, and his quiet chuckle, sounding unmistakably pleased, tickled your ear. “Are you always so charmingly responsive?” His voice was teasing, but not in a way that embarrassed you. 

“You’re the first,” you finally managed, in a whisper that was barely louder than a breath. You knew he heard you, because you heard a thoughtful hum, and then he pressed his forehead against your temple. He was so close. The smell of his soap, or his shampoo, or simply of his skin, seemed to envelop the two of you, and you breathed him in.

He didn’t say much else. When eyelids grew heavy, you did not fight to keep them open. He continued his ministrations. Now and then, you felt him twist some of your hair into a braid, only to smooth it out again when he’d finished. Amidst the many other sensations running through your body as you drifted into a doze, you could have sworn that you felt cool lips press against your cheek.


End file.
